What Disasters Are Likely? As we mentioned before, some regions are more prone to natural disasters than others. If you can take preventative measures to ensure they have a significantly less catastrophic effect on your business, you can recover more quickly and effectively. For example, if you are able to plan for evacuation and loss associated with specific disasters, like a hurricane or tropical storm, you can keep valuable assets (your employees) safe and sound. On the other hand, if you deal with winter storms and freezing rain conditions, there is a high chance that ice could bring down tree limbs, causing power surges and electrical damage. It?s all about knowing what you?re up against and planning accordingly. Which Parts Absolutely Need to Function? Depending on what kind of business you run, you?ll have to identify which parts will absolutely need to function properly in order to avoid a complete loss of operation. For example, you may have to keep client services functioning while your organization is experiencing a disaster. After all, it?s in their contract, and a breach of such a thing will result in loss of confidence in your business. Even if your business recovers, without your patrons or data, it won?t mean anything. Where Will Backups Be Stored? Not only do you want multiple copies of your data, you also want to make sure they are stored in different locations. Keeping one in the cloud is practically necessary, as it reduces time spent on recovery by a considerable amount, but you should generally follow the 3-2-1 rule. This is when you have three total copies of your data: two on-site (one on the network and one in physical copy) and one in the cloud for rapid recovery. How Much Data is Being Backed Up? Otherwise known as recovery point objective, or RPO, the amount of data you recover in the event of a disaster will be critical to the success of your data backup solution. It should be a number that?s enough to get back in action as soon as possible, but not an excessive amount that could complicate the restoration process. How Quickly Can You Restore Operations? The recovery time objective, or RTO, is defined as the amount of time it takes to get back into a pseudo-normal operational situation. By this we mean a situation where you?re not taking a loss by keeping operations running during a disaster scenario. Storing data in the cloud and using a rapid recovery device like a BDR (backup and disaster recovery) unit can make this much more efficient and less time-consuming as a whole. Does your business need help with implementing a data backup and disaster recovery scenario? White Mountain IT Services can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

To do so, we?ll discuss a few things that you have to make hard and fast policies for your employees to follow. Establish Roles and Responsibilities One of the most important features of successful collaborative efforts is the role that each person has in the greater process, and what they are responsible for as a result. While collaboration is a great way to help expedite the completion of tasks and projects, this is only the case so long as redundancy doesn?t enter into the mix. In essence, you need to establish a firm order of operations within your collaborative efforts, especially if that collaboration crosses between different departments of your team. Any of the benefits of collaboration can be eliminated if someone does the wrong thing at the wrong time – and this confusion most often erupts when someone in the process is unsure of their role, and what responsibilities they have as a result. Here?s a quick example to provide some hypothetical context: Let?s say someone in Department A begins a project. In their collaborative workspace, once that project is finished, it should be sent to a few resources in Department B to review and revise as needed before being enacted. This scenario only works if each person in the process understands what their role is, and what responsibilities that role has within the greater process. Returning to our example, any benefits that the collaboration may have had are negated if someone acts out of turn. In this case, once the project has been reviewed by the resources in Department B, Department A shouldn?t touch it again unless specifically asked to by Department B, who should then repeat their actions. Otherwise, mistakes that the review process would have caught can go unnoticed, and negatively affect the success of the project as a whole. Establish Firm, Yet Flexible, Goals On a related note, your goals need to be designed to help outline these responsibilities in a clear fashion, leaving little room for assumptions to be made. By providing your employees with goals that are based on definite outcomes, you are removing the ambiguity that leads to the complications described above and enabling your processes to move forward more effectively. However, this doesn?t mean that you can?t reexamine these processes and make adjustments to these goals to further improve them after you?ve seen how well (or not) they work. In fact, this is a crucial part of running a business successfully. As far as solutions go to enable collaboration, White Mountain IT Services has you covered. Reach out to us at (603) 889-0800 to find out how you can encourage clearer communications within your operations.

User Error: Mistakes Happen Even the best employee will eventually make a mistake, and with it comes the negative association with being punished or ?scolded? for making said mistake. They might even try to hide the mistake to avoid the fallout of it, particularly if they are afraid of being punished about it. It?s your responsibility to ensure that your employees understand that it?s only natural to make mistakes from time to time. In these moments, you must own it–particularly if the issue becomes a downtime incident. Hardware Failure and Technology Troubles If someone has a desktop that?s not functioning properly, they need to speak up and have IT address the issue. After all, if the worker is constantly at odds with their technology, it will lead to less work being done, and poorer quality work. Unless you want their work to suffer, you should provide them with a single point of contact for all of your business? IT needs. Phishing Scams Phishing scams can vary in scope and scale, but they generally involve your organization falling prey to targeted attempts at stealing business credentials. This is one of those mistakes that even senior employees might fall for. Phishing attacks can be as simple as someone posing as tech support to get a password, username, or remote access to a computer, only to install malware or other threats on it. Some of these attacks are so elaborate that they can convince users that the CEO of their business is asking for a wire transfer or other suspicious activity. Either way, you should always have the user investigate the authenticity of suspicious requests before carrying them out. Does your business need to protect itself from these threats? Of course it does. To learn more about how your organization can keep its network security intact, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

New Security It?s not exactly a secret that connected devices don?t always come with powerful security. In fact, the IoT has been looked at as a risk by IT administrators since its inception. After all, if there isn?t any strength to the integrated security of the device, it is a vulnerability that could, if leveraged as such, be a handle to pull an organization?s computing network down with. One of the biggest shifts we will begin to see within the IoT is a focus on device security. As it is right now, devices like wearables, internet-connected appliances, audio/media equipment, and other consumer-driven networked devices are designed to be easy to connect to. This makes them easy to exploit. More concerning are the devices designed for specific business tasks, such as factory equipment, automated utility infrastructure, security cameras, and more, all of which could cause trouble if they were accessed by an outside entity. More Devices Depending where you get your information, there are between eight and 25 billion IoT devices connected to the Internet. The smart money would bet on the latter number being more accurate. With that many devices, it?s hard to imagine any network being safe, right? The truth is that we?ve only hit the tip of the iceberg. Estimates put the number of Internet-connected devices at nearly 75 billion by 2025. If the industry is going to grow that rapidly, we?d like to see a whole lot less risk than there is with these devices today. IoT Devices Will Do More Most IoT devices do one specific task, and they do it well. With 5G networks right around the proverbial corner, it should usher in a whole new era for IoT. With the enhanced bandwidth afforded by 5G mobile network speeds, management of the endpoints created by IoT devices will suddenly be faster and more responsive. This will likely have a major effect on the security issue mentioned above as well as the limitations of capability that a lot of the devices that have been released thus far have. It Will Come to Define the Automobile IoT already has its place in the automotive industry, but as data becomes more and more important for automakers, the need for smart devices will enhance substantially. With the entire automotive industry on the precipice of being yet another data-hungry market, you are sure to see the use of innovative technologies like IoT grow precipitously. Business to the Edge Cloud computing has become one of the most important technology innovations of the 21st century (despite being developed in the 20th century). Today virtualized environments of all types provide countless options for the growing business to succeed. The cloud doesn?t work for everything however. Some parts of businesses simply don?t have any use for cloud computing per se. Logistics and shipping departments for manufacturers and distributors can benefit the from use of IoT technology. This is what is called edge computing, as they are important variables in a business? operations, but aren?t core technology systems. The Internet of Things will continue to be a major player in the way that businesses move into the information age. If you would like more information on the Internet of Things or on how your business should make IoT security a priority, call White Mountain IT Services today at […]

If there?s one thing that keeps a business going, it?s unified access to company resources. This includes file sharing. In order to collaborate and work on projects both individually or in groups, sharing files will be of critical importance. However, due to the rather risky nature of running a business, sharing files must be done securely, otherwise it puts your data in harm?s way. How can you make sure this doesn?t happen for your organization? We?ve put together some best practices for how a modern business can make sure they aren?t placing their business at risk with their file sharing practices. Take Measures to Prioritize Security Right from the get-go, your organization should be focused on implementing security features for your file sharing systems. You don?t want to find out your employees are using unauthorized applications for file sharing purposes, as they are much more difficult to control and manage. Therefore, you should make it a priority to take security into your own hands, as if you wait too long, it could spell trouble. Implement a Business-Grade System For the average consumer, there are several options for file sharing. While it might be tempting to save money and invest in other parts of your business, we urge you to consider enterprise-class products that are designed exclusively for business. In fact, many of the services the average user takes advantage of have enterprise offerings with security features designed for use with business. If you?re not sure of how to approach this kind of file sharing, be sure to reach out and ask us about it. Take Advantage of the Cloud The cloud is a great tool that can help your business thrive, and it?s especially helpful for file sharing. The cloud enables anytime-anywhere access, which can promote productivity and flexibility in your working environment. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of security unless you?ve implemented a virtual private network for your employees to access. What this does is encrypt data while it?s in transit, protecting files from being accessed by anyone who is unauthorized to do so. Educate Your Users The cornerstone of any data security measures is to educate your users on why it?s important, as well as how to do it. Train your employees on how to identify potential security issues while sharing files, as well as how to share information in a secure way. After all, if you are going to implement a secure method of sharing data and files, you better make sure your employees are going to use it (and use it well). To learn more about how you can implement file sharing for your business in a secure way, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.